Question

I’m reading Steve Yegge’s “Dynamic Languages Strike Back” talk, and in it he sort of criticizes mark-and-sweep GCs (about 5-10 percent through that link, the “Pigs attempt’s to fly” slide) What’s wrong with them?

Answer 1

Here’s the context of the quote:

Generational garbage collectors is the
best answer I’ve got for that, because
it reduces the pauses, and frankly,
the garbage collectors for all the
[new] dynamic languages today are
crap. They’re mark-and-sweep, or
they’re reference counted.

From the quote, he appears to be talking about fairly primitive GCs which aren’t generational. Generational GCs can still be mark and sweep, but they have a lot less to mark most of the time, which makes them a lot faster than “mark and sweep the world every time”.

Assuming that’s what he meant, I agree – but he could have put it more clearly. Bear in mind that this was a talk rather than a doctoral thesis though – coming up with the clearest possible way of expressing yourself “on the hoof” is kinda tricky 🙂